Only Human

by Sylvain Neuvel

  —What did you expect? They don’t know us. They don’t know what our intentions are.

  —Of course they know what they are. Our intention is to get out of this shithole and go back home, which is precisely what they seem to be hell-bent on preventing.

  —I don’t think they mean us any harm.

  —You don’t think…Goddammit! They killed a hundred million of us! That’s pretty unambiguous if you ask me.

  —I’m certain that’s not what they came to do. And you know I meant the four of us. They could have killed us on the spot when they found us inside Themis.

  —Is that good? Who’s to say they don’t want to torture us, dissect us, make us watch while they cut us into little pieces? Maybe that’s what they’re doing to Couture while you and I are talking.

  —Shhhh!

  —The kid’s sleeping, Rose. She can’t hear us.

  —And what if she’s not? She’s ten! She’s scared enough as it is. Don’t put ideas in her head. Vincent’s coming back. He could be in the next room. You saw what he did to that guard when he grabbed Eva.

  —Goddamn idiot. I thought he was gonna get us all killed.

  —That’s my point. They didn’t kill us. In fact, since we arrived, the only violence came from us, not them.

  —If I didn’t know you better, Rose Franklin, I’d say you’re taking their side.

  —There are no sides. There are no good guys and bad guys here. Everyone is just trying to do the right thing. I’m trying to understand where they’re coming from.

  —The right thing? Have you lost your goddamn mind? They’re killers, Rose. They kill people, by the million.

  —So do we.

  —And if we were holding four of them prisoner on Earth, they’d have every reason to be scared shitless. We would probably dissect them. I’m not saying we’re better than they are. I’m saying these aren’t the righteous evolved beings you make them out to be. They’re the dominant species on their world. They’re predators.

  —You’re afraid of them because they are…well, alien. Europeans had these maps of North Africa at the times of the Crusades. They marked the regions where giants lived, where two-headed people could be found. People fear what they don’t know.

  —Yeah, they do. People slaughter what they don’t know, they keep it in chains, they enslave it. I understand what you’re saying, believe me, Rose. I understand better than you do. This is what I’m afraid of. These people out there, they’re not alien. This is their home. We’re the aliens, Rose. We’re the two-headed monsters.

  —I understand that the events of the last few days might indicate otherwise—

  —Can you hear yourself? You’re talking like him, now.

  —Just trying to be clear. But I truly believe that their intention, when they came to Earth, was not to slaughter millions of us. What do the military call it? A surgical strike. I think that’s what it was supposed to be. In a way, I think they came to Earth to help us.

  —I don’t buy that for a goddamn second, but say you’re right. Does it change anything? No, it doesn’t. Not a goddamn thing. It’s not the intention that counts when it comes to genocide. They didn’t give us an ugly sweater for Christmas. They violently killed millions of us. You’re curious. I get that. But don’t lose sight of the facts. We know they’re killers because they killed millions. I don’t really give a damn if or why they wanted to do it. You want to study them, fine! Let’s bring one back with us. We’ll lock it in a cage and you can have a tea party with it every night if you want to. First order of business, though, is to get the hell out of here, get our butts back to Earth.

  —How? Seriously, how do you propose to do that, General? Yes, I’m curious. Maybe my curiosity is skewing my judgment a bit. I’m willing to admit that. I want to know more about them. Now you might think that’s a bad idea, but I don’t see us having any other choice. We don’t know how we got here. We don’t know if Themis has the capacity to get back to Earth on her own, and even if she did, we wouldn’t know how. Besides, she’s disabled right now, and we don’t know how to fix that. It seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, that if we want to get our butts back to Earth, as you say, these people are gonna have to do it for us. I think the odds of that ever happening increase exponentially if we don’t treat them as enemies. We need to get on their good side. Whether you’re sincere about it doesn’t necessarily matter, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.

  —And how do we go about that?

  —You can start by not calling them “it.”

  —You think they’re listening to us? Even if they did, this ain’t Star Trek. They can’t understand anything we’re saying.

  —Do you want to ask them, just to be sure?

  —I think I liked you more when you were on the verge of depression.

  FILE NO. EE013—PERSONAL FILE FROM ESAT EKT

  Interview between Opt Enatast and Vincent Couture

  Location unknown

  —Yincent! Yout yeyn enoy.

  —…

  —Yout.

  —You. I got that one.

  —Yeyn.

  —Yeyn? I have no idea wh—Learn! You learn more! No! I don’t learn more! And you have to learn some consonants, my friend. This is nuts. We’re not doing this anymore, not until I see my friends. I’ve been here for…You’ve had me cooped up in this stupid room with no windows for days now. I’m starving. I hate that white stuff you keep bringing me. Is it tapioca? I stink. I think I’ve been peeing in the sink. I wanna see my friends!

  —Yok yosk.

  —What?

  —Yok yosk.

  —Now? Yok is now, I think. I can see them now?

  —Yosk. Enow…epyus one.

  —Now plus one what? One hour? One day? Do you mean tomorrow?

  —How etut yout esay eton…oyow?

  —What? How…you say? How do you say tomorrow! No. “How do you say” is with your words. “What does X mean” is with my words.

  —What etos X enean etonoyow?

  —You don’t say X, you put the word where X is. What does tomorrow mean? And that’s…That’s a very good question. The sun was up the whole time we were inside Themis. You probably don’t care about the planet’s rotation…Sleep. How do you say sleep? Like this. Not sure the hands under my cheek are helping. Eyes closed. Over there. In the bed. I sleep in the bed.

  —Iksyokt.

  —Iksyokt? This…eyes closed, is iskyokt?

  —At.

  —I can see my friends now, plus one iskyokt?

  —At.

  —Yes? Yes I can see them?

  —At.

  —Yessssss. Thank you!

  —Iskyokt is eyes.

  —What? No. These are my eyes. This, with my eyes closed, is sleep. Iskyokt means sleep. Now, plus one sleep is tomorrow.

  —Yok yosk is etonoyow.

  —Yes sir! Let me write this down. Yosk. Could mean something like after, maybe next. At this rate, you and I will be able to talk to toddlers everywhere in no time.

  —Eyyots esat yok yosk.

  —What did you just say? You sounded real serious all of a sudden. What’s happening tomorrow?

  —Yout ekot etut Eteyat etonoyow.

  —I…to Terra tomorrow. I go to Terra tomorrow?

  —At.

  —We’re going home?

  —At At.

  —YES! Thank you! Do you guys do hugs?

  FILE NO. 2116 (CONTINUED)

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN MAJOR KATHERINE LEBEDEV, RUSSIAN MAIN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (GRU), AND VINCENT COUTURE

  Location: GRU building, Saint Petersburg, Russia

  —Who was this Opt guy? A language teacher or something?

  —Enatast. He…He’s some sort of scholar. He can’t pronounce an l to save his life, but he�
�s good with the law. He was sent there by the Council, the government.

  —To teach you how to speak.

  —No. Well, yes. I think he was helping them figure out what to do with us. They had no idea.

  —Like whether they should kill you or not?

  —No! They didn’t know what to make of us. They figured out we’re related to them when they came here, but we’re still…We’re very different. They have laws that tell them how to deal with full-blown aliens, and laws that tell them how to deal with people that are part Ekt, but those were intended for people that were born there. They weren’t prepared for a whole planet full of hairy people with a tiny bit of Ekt in them.

  —Hairy people?

  —Yeah—well, you saw Ekim—they don’t have body hair.

  —We don’t have a lot…

  —We have enough, apparently. People stopped us on the street to look at our arms. Kids wanted to touch our eyebrows. We were like Wookiees to them.

  —You’re making this up.

  —I swear. It was like Chewbacca landed in New York.

  —I don’t get it.

  —What? Chewbacca?

  —These people, these Ekt, they come here and they kill millions of us. Then they take you there and they just…what? Get you to learn their language. Feed you, clothe you, I suppose. For years. That doesn’t make sense to me. Were you prisoners the whole time?

  —No! It’s complicated. They don’t…We were some sort of legal, more like a philosophical, hot potato to them. They debated, a lot. The way their government works, it’s…slow.

  —So you didn’t spend nine years in a room with that Opt guy.

  —No, but I did talk to him a lot. He’s a good person and for a long time, he was the only one I could really talk to on their planet.

  —I thought you learned their language.

  —It takes a while before you can carry a real conversation with people. Enatast could meet me halfway. With everyone else, I felt like a tourist in Cuba. Donde esta la playa?

  —Did they have beaches?

  —They have oceans, but we’ve never seen one. They had plenty of sand…

  —What does it look like, their planet?

  —Well, it’s a planet, so it really depends on where you go. They have oceans, two continents. Each is divided into…regions…Osk, where we first stayed, was really…clean. Have you ever been to Singapore?

  —No, why?

  —Never mind. It was just really well kept. Beautiful, lots of old buildings. It’s where their…planetary government—I guess you can call it that—meets. The imperial palace is there. It’s gorgeous.

  —Skyscrapers?

  —No, everything was low. Nothing above two or three floors. We were in a government compound, though, so we didn’t see everything there was to see in Osk. They moved us to Etyakt next. Another region. It’s a weird mix of old and new. Lots of people from different places—

  —You mean planets?

  —Well, yeah. Planets, other regions. They were all born on Esat Ekt as far as I know, but some had ancestors that were from other worlds. Lots of different customs, all sorts of weird food. It wasn’t as pretty as Osk, but more…lively.

  —Why did you have to move?

  —Like I said, we were in some government building. Eva, Rose, and Eugene—I mean General Govender—were bunking together. There was a lot more room in Etyakt. We each had a house. Well, not Eva.

  —They gave it to you? Like, a real house?

  —I don’t think it was really ours. I never asked. It’s not like we were going to sell it.

  —Go on.

  —That’s it. We moved to a new place.

  —And you watched TV for nine years. The end.

  —There’s…no TV. There’s information you can watch, but they don’t act. No…fiction, just info.

  —Why not?

  —I don’t know. They just don’t. They write books, novels, but nothing visual. To have someone pretend to be someone else is just…not something they do. Anyway, we didn’t need TV. We had a whole world to discover. It took us weeks to figure out the house. How to use the kitchen, how to—

  —Uh-huh.

  —What? Too mundane for you?

  —I don’t know, I think alien world, I don’t think Martha Stewart.

  —What did you expect? Space combat? We ate and we slept and we washed dishes. I know it sounds boring, but…how do I explain this? Imagine yourself in a place that kinda looks like here, but every little thing is just different enough to make you feel like an idiot. It’s familiar, but you don’t know how to use the door handles, the toilet. You don’t know if the thing you’re holding in your hand is a fork or some kind of screwdriver. Is that box food, something like salt, what you clean the toilet with? We were…lost.

  FILE NO. EE026—PERSONAL FILE FROM ESAT EKT

  Interview between Rose Franklin and Vincent Couture

  Location: Assigned residence, Etyakt region

  —Can we do this quick, Rose? Eva wants to take a walk, and I don’t want her to go outside alone.

  —It won’t take long. I just want to keep some record of our time here if we’re leaving soon. Do you mind?

  —No, it’s fine. Go! Go! Let’s talk.

  —So…What can you tell us about where we are?

  —Enatast told me this is a residential neighborhood somewhere in the Etyakt region. I’m not sure what these houses are for, but he said we can stay here until we leave. It’s pretty. There are trees everywhere. Weird, alien trees.

  —They’re not that weird. I’m actually surprised at how not weird everything is. I mean, sure, it’s all different, but it’s also…

  —Not different?

  —There are houses, for one thing, streets, neighborhoods. They have government. Some of it makes sense. They’ve spent a couple thousand years on Earth near what was the epicenter of civilization. It’s possible they’ve influenced us a lot more than we thought—don’t tell them I said that. But there are things I really didn’t expect. Look at how close their vegetation is to ours.

  —Rose, I’ve looked. Have you ever seen a tree with multicolor bark?

  —I have. Rainbow eucalyptus. I think that’s what it’s called. Has bark just like that. The street is a lot weirder if you ask me. That black sand, it looks volcanic. I wonder if all the streets are like that.

  —You’re free to walk around, you know. You wanted to see more of the place. Here’s your chance.

  —Do we know if it’s safe?

  —I don’t think they would have us stay in the middle of a war zone, Rose. There aren’t any guards at the door.

  —I saw one walk by earlier. Her uniform looked different, but she was armed.

  —Different government. I know they call them regions—well, I call them regions, they call them etyeks. It means a part of something, but from what I gather it’s really more like a country. Different rules, different…everything. We were in the Osk region before, this is just south of that. And by south, I mean lower on the map that Enatast showed me. I don’t know if there’s really a south.

  —Vincent, did Ena…

  —His name is Enatast.

  —Did Enatast tell you why we’re here?

  —He said we’d be more comfortable.

  —Did he say when we’re leaving?

  —He says he doesn’t know.

  —Do you believe him? We were supposed to leave right away, and it’s been days.

  —Do I believe that he doesn’t know when? Yes. I’m sure he knows what the holdup is about but that he won’t say.

  —I have a feeling we’ll be here awhile.

  —Why do you say that?

  —They’ve given us a place to live, Vincent. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a few extra n
ights. We could have stayed where they were holding us before.

  —I don’t know. He says we’re leaving soon. There’s obviously a lot he’s not telling me, in part because I can’t understand half of what he says, but I don’t think he has any reason to lie to us. He’s getting good, though. He can pronounce d’s now, sorta, and r’s. He growls them. He still adds vowels before everything, but you can barely hear it anymore.

  —He’s right about one thing. This place is way more comfortable.

  —You like it here, don’t you?

  —I just said it’s a lot more comfortable.

  —I didn’t mean the house. You like being here, on this planet.

  —It’s a bit eerie, but yes, I do. It’s a new world, aren’t you the least bit excited?

  —Looks a lot like Havana, without any windows.

  —I’ve never been to Cuba.

  —Sorry, I forgot you weren’t allowed back then. I went on vacation a few times. You could get an all-inclusive for five hundred bucks, booze included. Anyway, that’s what it looks like. Spanish architecture, intricate details, bright colors. Only Havana’s falling apart. It looks great from the street, but go on a rooftop, and it looks like Beirut. Gaping holes everywhere. This place is in great shape.

  —And empty.

  —We can’t complain about the neighbors.

  —It’s not just our block, Vincent. Eugene and I went outside. We didn’t see anyone, anywhere.

  —There’s a market about a twenty-minute walk that way, supposedly. Enatast said there are people living on the other side of that.

  —OK, but you don’t think it’s weird that there are empty houses for miles on end? Also, there are no…cars, no vehicles.

  —There weren’t any where they kept us before either. I noticed that when we left. Maybe they…beam themselves anywhere they can’t walk. And yeah, of course it’s weird, Rose. Everything is. Have you tried the bathroom?

  —I have.

  —Do your legs touch the ground?

  —No, they just hang. But I understand the concept. Their legs have to bend underneath, and they have these extra joints so they can keep their feet on the floor.